In some wireless networks, mobile stations may operate in an active state, in which the mobile station (MS) may transmit and receive data. Some mobile stations may also operate in an idle state in which the communications hardware for the MS may be placed into a low power or off state to conserve power. While in idle state, the MS may be either in a paging unavailable mode in which paging messages may not be received, or in a paging available mode where the MS may receive paging messages. The base station (BS) may send a paging message to notify the MS that the MS has data to be delivered to the MS. At various times, the MS will transition from paging unavailable mode to paging available mode to: 1) to receive a paging group identifier (PGID) of a local base station to determine if the MS has moved outside a specific paging area. If the MS has moved outside a specific paging area, the MS may perform network re-entry or a location update procedure with the new BS to notify the network of the MS's new location. And, 2) to receive the paging message, which may indicate if the BS has data to be delivered to the MS. If there is data to be delivered to the MS, the MS may transition to active state, perform network re-entry and receive the data.
In some cases, there may be a trade off between paging area size and location update frequency. A larger paging area may create larger paging overhead to send a large number of paging messages, but less frequency location updates being required by MSs. Whereas, a smaller paging area may decrease paging overhead, but may increase the location update burden on mobile stations.